My timeline on every branch of social media today has been a steady stream of photos of a shopping mall.
Portland’s Lloyd Center, once the largest shopping mall in the country, closed its doors for the final time today.
Lloyd Center was a refuge for generations, a Third Place, a place to shop and play and get into shenanigans. Tanya Harding skated at the ice rink. The line at Honeybaked Ham was a half a block long at every holiday. We went there to see the Easter Bunny and Santa. We did our Christmas shopping and bought our back to school clothes there. Joe Brown’s Carmel Corn was there from day one until today.
I did my time there, from November of 1995 to February of 1998. Three. Christmas. Seasons. I worked at three stores in five different locations. I don’t regret a day of it.
For Sandra and Rachel and Geri at Import Plaza, for Eric at Boston Sox, for Mara at Motherhood Maternity and her sister Taryn at Shoe Mill, for James and Skye at Camelot, for the rockabilly guy who worked at Meier and Frank and the blonde girl at the Pretzelmaker who would give us free ranch for our salty parm pretzels, I made a final pilgrimage there today.
So much of it has changed since we were all there. Since Mercedes would stand outside the third location of IP and taunt the Hot Topic girl by loudly saying,”You. Are. SO. Alternative.” Since James would give me free Rolling Stone magazines. Since Kerry worked at the kitchen supply store.
So much is gone from that time. Even the bar we often went to after the mall closed, Chopsticks on Burnside, is long gone, replaced by a parking lot.
So I put on the closest thing I have to the chunky-heeled gladiator sandals that were so popular when I worked there, and I went back to visit one last
time.
It was packed.
I parked underground at the Nordstrom end as I always have. I rode the escalator up past the Sees Candies store. I walked the length of the mall. I thought about all those people from my time in the mall, and I wonder where they are, if they made their own last visits. I’m sure some of them did.
I saw a rink full of skaters. Every still existent store full of customers. A group of furries, and another group holding a dance party. I saw people writing their remembrances on the walls, I saw kids drawings bidding Lloyd Center farewell. I saw so many photographers. I hope they somehow capture the sadness of this weird sort of wake and the joy of what we once had there.
It was the only center in the center of the city. Lloyd Center had it all.
octoberthoughtspdx 